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Kids Work Harder When They Pretend to Be Batman

For me, it’s red lipstick, a great blow out, or a crisp white shirt. Sometimes, when I really need to get out of a rut, I wear my black heels, which I spent way too much money on but make me feel like I'm at a focused-like-a-rock-star level.

Apparently, for kids, imagining they are Batman does the trick.

Psychologist Rachel E. White led a team of colleagues, including Angela Duckworth of “Grit” fame, studied how a group of 180 children between the ages of four and six work, and if thinking of themselves as Batman would keep them focused and less distracted. They discovered that the "Batman Effect" is real, and their findings were published in Child Development.

Turns out, Batman has serious focus superpowers.

The researchers tested how the children worked with a few methods, including some in a “self-immersed condition” that had them ask themselves if they were working hard, a third-person perspective where they asked themselves “Is [child’s name] working hard?”, and a third group of children who were told to imagine they were either Batman, Bob The Builder, Rapunzel or Dora the Explorer. The latter group were told to ask themselves “Is [whichever character] working hard?” and it was this method that was the most effective at keeping them focused. And within the group of characters, Batman was the most effective at helping the kids resist distraction.

“Regardless of the origins of the benefits [of the Batman condition] seen here, it is important to note that pretending to be another character had large effects on children’s perseverance,” the researchers said. Role-play can be an effective method of helping children develop perseverance.